Category: coffee

Wobble Like Crazy

I’m back in the writing space following some unpleasant medical issues. In the last three days, I’ve averaged two thousand words each. It’s delicious to feel like I’m moving forward, no matter how word counts fall upon the writing spectrum in regards to their importance. I didn’t plan any word counts but they’re proof of something happening, a minor validation that I’ve been doing more than daydreaming.

After some arguing with the muses, me interrogating them to explain every thread, decision, and insight, and them laughing at me, I followed their instructions to, “Just write.” Some of the writing could be permanent but some of it might be delicately sculpted away or blown away with heavy explosives. Doesn’t matter. What I’ve written before during other writing projects may not help me this time. Each time that I write another novel, it’s a new adventure in learning how to be a better writer. I must write to have the material to shape, an interesting cycle. Write, edit, write, re-write, write, revise…where am I?

Well, I’m on the novel-writing spectrum. I slide along, following paths, retracing, forging new paths, falling off cliffs, and climbing back up. So it goes until there’s finally enough coherency for a novel to take shape, and then, finally, enough satisfying story in a reasonable order arrives, and then, at last, I pick a place where it can be comfortably ended with reasonable reward for readers who ventured through my thicket of words.

Can you say run-on?

I’m permitted a cup of coffee a day. I apply my allowance to my writing.

Illness is depressing, not because I have it, but because of its limitations. Bending down to pick up a piece of paper, scratch a cat’s chin, or put on my shoes and socks is slow and tedious and brings a measure of stinging discomfort. Walking remains uncomfortable and difficult, but not impossible. Of course, I have a history of rushing the healing processes. Press on, regardless, right? When I had a broken neck on Okinawa and wore a halo device, I pushed to go back to work and ended up dislodging that metal mother twice, sending me back into hospital. Anyway, I wobble around at a slow and careful pace, watching the ground to find the threads and seeds that the muses leave, then trying to parse their guidance.

Yeah, just write, baby. Stop critiquing, doubting, wondering, fearing, worrying, and questioning. Just get ‘er done. Pitter-patter.

Done writing like crazy for at least one more day. Sloshy, my drain-collection bag resting against my calf, is filled. Time to wobble on and empty him.

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Writing Interrupted

Ready for a rant of self-pity and exasperation? It’s all about me. Yeah, you’ve been warned.

So, sick. Nothing threatening like a terminal disease, just a trifecta of irritations, a head cold, the flu, and then a kidney stone. With each, I thought, this will pass, and then I prayed that the last one, the kidney stone, passed fast (which it seems to have done).

Three weeks mostly killed except for a few days when I caved to the obligation to defy my body, throwing ripples of confusion and discontinuity into my carefully constructed writing existence. I could little practice the rituals of writing, of  walking to clear my mind, establishing a mental framework for walling myself into a solitary zone where I coexist with word storms, of ordering coffee and sitting down to tap, tap, tap, forwards and backwards, creating and correcting, of staring out windows and trying to understand WTF the muses are trying to tell me.

Illness didn’t slow my inner writer and army of muses. Death might slow them down, but not minor illnesses. They came in waves, expecting to be released or entertained. That doing nothing routine was unacceptable, a position strengthened because my illness habits called for me to read, sleep, dream, awaken, and read, punctuated by episodes of eating, drinking tea, and the sickness processes that my body demanded in which it hurled things out. Nothing like reading to calm the writer, right? Wrong.

Perhaps, worse of all, was the limited coffee. My taste buds warred with the coffee’s flavor. Variations failed. Spiced herbal teas were substituted, but they’re not coffee, ya know?

All of that seems cleared away today. Did my walk. Got my coffee. It still doesn’t taste right, but I’ll work through it. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Today’s song is one I sing briefly for myself almost every morning because I’ve tortured the lyrics to address my morning coffee ritual.

“Pour some coffee for me.

“Make it black, hot and strong,

“I can drink it all day long.”

Here’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, Def Leppard, 1987.

 

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I Notice

I often think about what might come next in my WIP, plot arcs, character growth, scenes, and dialogue. Sometimes I use what’s produced but I frequently go with something that erupts in my head when I sit down to write.

Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Super Rant

I have a super rant today about the overuse of super. Things are super-clean, super-neat, super-simple, super-priced, and super-super. It’s super-irritating. Like literally, super has lost its super meaning, becoming another empty word used as a synonym for that overused word, very. Guess this is progress, or just change. It’s how the language grows, mis-employing words that aren’t understood to give them new meaning.

I guess I’m an old crab. Coffee, and make it super-quick.

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Genius Drinks

So you know that they’ve come out with Genius Coffee. It’s about time, innit? But, I hasten to inquire, where is our genius booze? I’d like to walk into my fav beverage hangout and ask for a Genius IPA.

Wouldn’t it be excellent if McDonald’s and Wendy’s began selling genius milkshakes? (Picture those television commercials.) Have a Genius Coke with your Jack? Prefer a Genius Red Bull? No doubt we’d need to have genius wine, vodka, tequila, to be fair, along with genius water, for those who don’t partake.

Maybe, then, if all these genius beverages work, we can make progress on what humanity is doing to each other and the rest of the world. Doubts force me to say, probably not. More likely, some will declare, “I don’t trust geniuses, so why should I swallow a genius drink?”

I don’t blame them. I’d be dubious of genius drinks. God knows what I’d learn about myself that I’ve worked so hard to hide.

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Wasting Time

I did my Sudoku puzzle this morning. I like doing them early in the morning. Completing something, accomplishing something, gives me a pleasant lift.

It was a two-star puzzle, not very complicated, lots of clues. But the two-star puzzles feel more difficult to me. It took me six minutes this morning. I thought, I should be able to do them faster than that. Why do they take me so long?

The harder puzzles are more enjoyable and actually seem easier, even if they take longer. In the two-star and three-star levels, they give so many clues that the clues seem to exhaust me. Whereas, when it’s a four-star or five-star puzzle, with more blank spaces and less clues, I seem to see the patterns and employ logic more quickly.

I wondered about that, reckoning that I like the math portion of the problem solving less than the logic side of it. That sent me on a quest to understand more about solving Sudoku problems. One thing led to another and before long, I was exploring the complexities of time. An hour later, I found myself rushing to leave to write, at once celebrating that there’s so much to know, lamenting that I don’t have the intelligence and capacity to understand more, celebrating that I have the urges to explore these things, and wishing that I had more time to explore and understand. Then it was off to the races to write, and more thinking about my choices.

Along the way, I thought about how I used to work, as in, someone employed me, most of the day, and at last I have the freedom to indulge myself and pursue my dreams. Then I came here (to the coffee shop), wrote like crazy, and then wrote this little piece, reflecting on that as a choice as well.

This piece took about ten minutes to write and edit. I didn’t think much consciously about it before beginning to write it, but it was turbidity in my streams that I felt like I needed to write about it to explore my thinking and understand myself.

Meanwhile, I entered the coffee shop, got my coffee, plunked myself down at the computer, and wrote almost non-stop for ninety minutes, making great progress, adding another four thousand words to the total, after editing.

Now the coffee is cold. Most of the cup remains. I’ll chug it and leave, declaring myself done writing like crazy, for at least one more day. I expect there to be more days.

There’s always so much to read, learn, experience, and think about. Then there’s writing about it. It’s a never-ending demand. TGFC (thank God for coffee).

Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Once again, I found myself humming along and singing along to a song that I’d started streaming, a song that just sort of blending into the general streams flooding my thinking.

This is a Phillip Phillips song, “Home” (2012). Here the lyrics that hooked me this morning:

Settle down, it’ll all be clear
Don’t pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble—it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

I’d be reflecting on the big lie, fleshing more of its manifestations. The big lie is that we’re all the same as humans. Need to lose weight? Diet and exercise. Want to get ahead? Well, the answer to that one includes some references to God, love, and Jesus, as well as get an education or work hard, and you’ll be rewarded.

Sometimes, it happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. The big lie is that it will. And the big lie keeps us trying, because sometimes the big lie works, and that aspect keeps us hoping and striving.

I’m getting off track. Thinking about others, not myself, I was reflecting upon life’s complexities and how people can get lost, indeed, how easy it is to become lost, through bad fortune, misinformation, trusting the wrong others, or tricks of your body or mind. Many people are sick or ill, but won’t let it show until it’s forced into the light. Others will play up every sickness or slight to get attention and help, but end up taking advantage of the situation. Yet, sometimes, that’s a sickness in itself.

We create ruts and chase habits that form addictions, blinding ourselves, or permitting ourselves to lie and mislead ourselves, sometimes more than we mislead others. And others see it but don’t know what to say or do.

What a world, what a world. It’s all too deep, and yet that depth invites greater exploration — is that another addiction?

Give me another cuppa coffee. Oh, wait —

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Last Wish

Dressed in a long, glossy black skirt, black boots, and a hooded black rain coat, she shuffled in slowly. Her steps made no sounds. A little bent forward, white, with wire rim glasses, she looked straight ahead.

She looks like death, he thought.

Turning, she looked at him, raised a black-gloved finger at him, and smiled. She is death, he realized. The scene changed. Instead of being at a coffee shop table typing on a computer, he was squirming and shaking against the shock of being born.

Great, he thought back in the other moment, guessing that he was going to endure a this-is-your-life montage before dying.

That was probably going to take a while.

He wished he had more coffee.

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